Analyses of God beliefs, atheism, religion, faith, miracles, evidence for religious claims, evil and God, arguments for and against God, atheism, agnosticism, the role of religion in society, and related issues.

Monday, March 2, 2009

By and large, belief in God is a socially transmitted phenomena. People today believe because their parents, family, and friends believe. A believer’s source of information about God is acquired through other people. In the larger picture, Christians, Muslims, and Jews who believe now had their doctrines communicated to them from other believers. A belief of a Christian today is built upon the belief of Christians 2,000 years ago who first began to propagate the stories of Jesus. Some of these stories were later codified in a collection that was deemed to be canonical in the Bible, with the stories that weren’t approved being rejected and even destroyed. Nevertheless, believers today take the beliefs of some of the original followers as evidence.

The reasonableness of a person’s belief today, therefore, will be dependent upon the reasonableness of the earlier followers’ beliefs, at least to the extent to which the modern believer bases their belief on the early believers. Modern Christians base their belief heavily on the authenticity and reliability of the early followers’ beliefs. The Gospels, as well as the rest of the Bible, are the primary source of information that the modern Christian has concerning the reality of Jesus, the resurrection, God, and so on. If Jones’ belief depends upon Smith’s, then there are number of important questions that Jones’ must address if she hopes to be reasonable and justified. “I believe it because Smith said that it is true, and Smith is a reliable source of information,” would be a perfectly common and reasonable inference. That is, Jones shouldn’t accept the claim unless she is satisfied that Smith’s belief is reasonable, and that Smith’s standards of justification meet certain minimal standards.

That means the real question about the origin of the modern Christians’ belief is about the reliability of the first Christians’ beliefs.

Consider important epistemic differences between us and them, and their impact on the question of their reliability.

How disposed is a person, in general, to accept or reject claims about supernatural entities, forces, or events? Let’s call this their Supernatural Belief Threshold (SBT). If they have a low SBT, then they are more readily disposed to believe that supernatural claims are true. If their SBT is high, then they do not have a high receptivity to supernatural claims. Of course, many people will accept one supernatural claim but not another. And many supernatural claims are exclusive because accepting one requires or is associated with rejecting some others. Nevertheless, we can roughly separate people into those who would be more or less willing to accept the general notion that there are forces, events, or agents that exist and that occur that are beyond the mere physical world. A person who accepts that Jesus is the son of God, that God exists, and that the influence of the Holy Spirit is present in the lives of many people finds more supernatural propositions to be plausible than someone is an atheist or who denies those claims and claims like them. Even today, there are many people who have a low SBT and as a result accept claims that most of us would reject. Devout believers routinely go to faith healing revival meetings and witness what appear to be miraculous healings. They leave convinced that a real supernatural event has occurred. But a few questions and some simple investigation reveals that the cases are most likely the result of enthusiasm, mistakes, or, lamentably, outright fraud. Faith healers often provide complimentary wheelchairs to people coming to the meeting who are able to walk, and then in front of thousands they magically command that the person’s ability to walk be restored. When that person gets up and walks away from the wheelchair, thousands of people who don’t know about the deceit are suitably impressed.

What effect would it have for a person to have a low SBT? Their error rate with regard to supernatural claims would be higher than it would be otherwise. They would conclude that miracles were more common than they really are, for example. Suppose there were some supernatural propositions that were true and that were well supported by the available evidence. A person with a low SBT would be quite likely, we will assume, to accept and believe those claims. And if they did and then communicated those claims to you, they would be communicating something true to you. But if there were supernatural ideas circulating about that were false or unfounded, this same person would be more likely to believe them too, so he would be more likely to communicate those mistaken ideas to you too. A person with a high SBT would be the opposite sort of source. Presumably, she would find fewer false or unfounded supernatural claims to be reasonable. And if there were true and reasonable ones available, she would be less likely to believe those and to become a reliable source to you about them. She will mislead you in some cases, but in the direction of having fewer supernatural beliefs than are well-supported. The person with a low SBT would mislead you also, but in the direction of accepting more of those claims than are true and well-supported. The former is too reluctant about such claims, the latter is too promiscuous.

We can also think about the level of ignorance (I) that a person have regarding the issues surrounding x. If someone is largely ignorant of the important background information concerning profession football, for instance, like I am, then that ignorance should be factored into whether or not you should accept the claims that I make about it. If my ignorance about some topic is high, then my authority and my believability or my reliability about it is low. So my ignorance about it should diminish the confidence you have about one of those claims being true, all other things being equal.

We have independent evidence that there is a close connection between belief in God and education level. Numerous studies have demonstrated that as education level increases, belief in God drops off. (http://www.harrisinteractive.com/harris_poll/index.asp?pid=359) This study also shows that as a person’s education level increases, their belief in survival of the soul, miracles, heaven, the resurrection, the virgin birth, hell, the devil, ghosts, astrology, and reincarnation drop off dramatically. Gallup Polls have consistently found similar results: http://www.gallup.com/poll/109108/Belief-God-Far-Lower-Western-US.aspx

We can see an important parallel here. These studies show that currently across different levels of education, religiousness, superstition, and supernaturalism are positively correlated with ignorance. When people have more education, they are less likely to believe. Now consider the difference between your education level, and the general level of knowledge that the average American with a K-12 education has and the level of ignorance of a simple fisherman or a beggar living in the first century in Palestine. Almost all of the information that you take for granted, the technology, and the methods for acquiring information were unavailable to them. A tiny fraction of the population would have been literate. Their mathematical abilities would have been worse than today’s average 3rd grader. They did not know that the Earth moves, or what the Sun was. They did not know that the Earth was a sphere. They did not know what caused disease, or pregnancy, or death. It is difficult to exaggerate the extent of the difference between the things that you know as a matter of obvious common sense and what they knew about the world. If religiousness, superstition, and supernaturalism rise as education goes down, then they must have been rampant among the people who had contact with Jesus (if he was real at all.)

Let’s consider one more epistemic variable that affects the reliability of a source. Abstractly, we could think of the general level of skepticism, doubtfulness, or disposition towards critical scrutiny that a person has. If a person habitually reflects on the evidence carefully, makes a conscious and careful effort to gather the broadest body of relevant evidence, and actively seeks out disconfirming grounds for a claim, that, all other things being equal, is favorable with regard to their trustworthiness as a source of information. If a person whose skepticism (S) is high becomes satisfied that X is true, then you could be more confident that it is true, all other things being equal, than you would be if your source for the same claim was someone who is generally gullible, uncritical, and who does not reflect or seek out disconfirming evidence.

The people who are the sources of information about Jesus and his alleged resurrection--the authors of the Gospels, the people who told them the stories, the people who originally heard these stories and then propagated them--would have had a low supernatural belief threshold, at least concerning Jesus stories. They were also ignorant of the broad body of information that we have today concerning religious tendencies, religious group dynamics, psychology, alternative explanations for paranormal beliefs. They were also ignorant of the 2,000 years of examples of allegedly supernatural events that turned out to be easily explainable in natural terms. In that 2,000 years, we have learned a staggering amount about how human psychology works, errors in reasoning, problems in eye-witness reports, gullibility, mistakes, social-religious phenomena, and so on.

The people who were sources of information about Jesus and his alleged resurrection would have been much less skeptical overall than many people who are good sources of information now are. They would not have been trained or practiced or even familiar with the notions of disconfirming evidence, alternative explanations, bias, and justification. Many of these concepts as we are familiar with them in modern scientific contexts are only a few centuries or a few decades old. The multiplication rule in probability was not understood until the 1800s. The scientific principles of seeking out evidence that could disconfirm a hypothesis, or of double-blind, objective investigation protocols have only recently begun to be understood. People relaying stories about the resurrection of Jesus in 35 AD would not have known, or employed these methods.

Again the implication of lacking skepticism is that such a person would be an unreliable source of information. Failing to invoke doubt or to seek out alternative, natural explanations for allegedly supernatural events would result in their accepting and relaying more of those stories than are true or well-supported. These sources of information will be prone to mislead us towards gullibility. If we were to accept their claims, we might acquire some true, well-justified views, but we are also more likely to end up believing more that are not. Someone who is highly skeptical, however, will be a better source in that she will be less likely to accept claims that are false or unjustified, all other things being equal. The downside will be that she will also be less likely to communicate true claims to you.

So the people who would have relayed stories about Jesus’ resurrection in the early years would have been prone to accept supernatural beliefs, they would have been quite ignorant of many of the relevant facts, and they would have lacked the skepticism. These three traits would have contributed to high error rates in their communicating information about important religious matters like the resurrection of Jesus. In general, they would have been highly prone to accept such claims even when they were not true or supported by the evidence. How unreliable? Consider the problem this way: knowing what you know now, would have trusted them for medical advice? information about nature? guidance about how to grow plants? information about the weather? Are there any topics except the most obvious and rudimentary where you would accept them as authoritative sources?

The Romans who were contemporaries to Jesus would have had a wide range of religious and supernatural views. They believed in a wide range of omens, and spiritual phenomena. They accepted the existence of a number of gods. Why wouldn’t you accept their claims about those matters? Probably because their SBT was low, their ignorance was high, and their skepticism was low. You don’t deem them to be good sources of information about such matters. There are countless people today who are much better educated and who have a much better body of background information who make supernatural, miracle, and magical claims on a regular basis, yet you do not believe them. We are surrounded by smart and skeptical people making supernatural claims that we reject as suspicious, yet we accept the most outrageous claims from utterly unreliable people in the first century.

Here is the irony of the problem here. Suppose that Jesus really was a divine being and he really was resurrected from the dead. And suppose that the people who alleged to witness the events surrounding that resurrection did see them and it happened more or less as it has been relayed to us. Even if it all happened and they got it right, their overall unreliability about such matters is so high, you shouldn’t accept what they claim is true simply because it is coming from them. Since they are the only source of information that we have, and since they would have been such untrustworthy sources, we have no choice except to suspend judgment about what they say. Imagine that a NASA astronomer with a Ph.D. from MIT tells me that Mars is the fourth planet from the sun. And suppose that an illiterate tribesman from an isolated village in the jungles of Borneo were to tell me the same thing. And suppose that I didn’t have any other information about the matter that would allow me to corroborate their claims independently. The astronomer would be a reliable source of information who would justify me, but the tribesmen would not, even though what he is saying is true. We must, especially in matters where testimony is the main or only source of information, consider the source before we accept what he or she says. A group of illiterate, uneducated Iron Age religious zealots who had become deeply engrossed and invested in a religious movement are not reliable sources of information about extraordinary, miraculous events that are alleged to have happened to their religious leader. They are the people who you should trust the least for information of this sort. As a result, it is unreasonable to believe that Jesus was resurrected on the basis of the information that you have. And if that’s unreasonable, then it’s a mistake to be a Christian, particularly when you are aware of the poor state of its epistemic foundations.

The common error when modern Christians think about the early Christians, I think, is to assume to a large extent that they were like us concerning relevant epistemic criteria. If you are going to believe because they believe, then you have to adopt this stance. You can’t take their word for it, and simultaneously acknowledge that they were irrational, unjustified, or uninformed about the matter. If I think of them as being more or less like me with regard to skepticism, rationality, and information, then it would make sense for me to believe what they believe. But this projecting ignores the facts: the early Christians were from a radically different, ancient culture that did not have any of the scientific, educational, or historical advantages that we take for granted. Their background, their propensity toward supernaturalism, and their ignorance would have made them radically different, and radically worse, epistemic agents than us. And those differences make them utterly unreliable as sources of information about Jesus.

In 1911, some Californians discovered a man name Ishi who was the last living member of an isolated tribe of Yana indians who lived in the hills near Lassen. Anthropologists were fascinated with the case because he was one of the closest examples ever found of contact between a group of people who were virtually living in the stone age with people living in the modern era. Ishi achieved some level of assimilation and enjoyed some celebrity until his death from tuberculosis in 1916. Ishi was an expert archer, and he was accomplished making stone arrowheads and shooting a simple bow. But Ishi also believed a mystical Land of the Dead where the souls of the Yana had a shadowy existence. Link You might plausibly accept Ishi as a reliable source of information about making and shooting a bow and arrow, but no reasonable person would accept his views about the Land of the Dead merely on the grounds that he said that it was real. To accept the early Christians claims about Jesus, God, and the afterlife would be a comparable mistake.

31 comments:

"Imagine that a NASA astronomer with a Ph.D. from MIT tells me that Mars is the third planet from the sun. And suppose that an illiterate tribesman from an isolated village in the jungles of Borneo were to tell me the same thing."

What a great a post. And what a great idea for a more in-depth exploration of the topic.

How about this one, "Why Jesus Won't Return: Time, Geography and Culture and the Epistemology of Supernatural Belief."

I have often asked the question of what evidence a Christian would accept today of the second coming and then asked why they don't apply the same rules of evidence to their current beliefs about two thousand years ago. I've never received an answer.

Steve Martin wrote:"I have a friend who believes that global warming is true even though the earth has cooled over the last ten years."

Well, your friend could look at the following for a start: http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-stopped-in-1998.htm

But you know, it could turn out to be true that the earth has cooled over the last ten years. It could even turn out that global warming isn't really happening, or that it isn't as serious a threat as many have thought. But if this is established, how will it be established? Won't it be by the careful compilation and analysis of evidence?

Now consider the belief that the reports of Jesus' resurrection are trustworthy. What is the evidence offered in support of that claim? Notice that Matt points to evidence that seems to weaken the credibility of these reports. Well, that evidence could also turn out to be flawed, but if it is, it will be by other psychological and sociological studies. Or, I suppose, it could be outweighed by the Second Coming.

By the way, the acquaintance I mentioned denies global warming on the grounds that the scientists who say it is happening are "liberals". Not exctly an evidence-based position.

"I will explain how you delete my comments that go against your 'faith' in Global Warming.

You don't want people to see the truth do you?

Why then do you not put up those articles (and I have dozens more from a wide variety of credible sources)?"

There is no "faith" in Climate Change Science or in science in general. Science does operate on "faith" science relies and requires evidence. And there is a standard of evidence for science, (all branches). If you want to play with the big dogs you have to play by the same rules. Your "evidence" has been refuted and debunked by most of the worlds scientists that are involved in climate change science. But you may still have "faith" in that belief but your standards of evidence are far less than the norm.

Religion operates on faith, which is the belief WITHOUT evidence. Not so much for science. No matter how many times you say it.

Wow, do you think you're overreacting a little bit? "Totalitarian"? "the Left"? If you want to blog about global warming, or the lack thereof, go for it. Write volumes and volumes about it. It's just getting too far off topic here. Do you have anything interesting or thoughtful to say about the epistemic issues surrounding believing 1st century Christians and Jesus?

Atheist have a disbelief in God. Thus they can be in error of reasoning of their disbelief. They can also base such a disbelief on ignorance. For example, lets say I do not know that the twinkle of a star is due to cosmic gases and rather believe that it is magical. I could have a disbelief that cosmic gases cause stars to appear to twinkle based on ignorance of the gaseous state, which may be the case if I were a junglemen. Obviously this disbelief is also supported by the junglemen's superstituous beliefs (note a positve belief preceeded a negative).

Also, an atheist's disbelief can be a case of false cause.

Don't you need a reason for disbelief just as you do for belief?

Oddly, a negative belief seems to carry a belief in a sense since its false propositional value is not the center of attention due to its inherent absence. This may explain why we have so much trouble with the liar's paradox (Russels soluton works).

Superstition: : a belief or practice resulting from ignorance, fear of the unknown, trust in magic or chance, or a false conception of causation

Hello people! I'm a devoted Catholic from a third world country. It is obvious that atheists from first world countries think that most of the inhabitants here are primitive due to the fact that almost all of us are Christians. I am a nurse and I am also taking up BS Physics as a second course just so you know that I am an "educated person." Just to explain why my being an educated person doesn't affect my faith is because of my own experiences as an individual and not just because of the influence of my ancestors. One could easily become an Atheist when one faces difficult problems and would later on have disbelief in God because of unanswered prayers but for my case it is more stressful to think of it that way. I don't know if you've noticed how high stress levels are in First World countries. More suicides. It's like a psycho movie wherein morbid cases of problems usually arise. Here in our country, people just laugh problems off and of course PRAY. All the negative emotions go away. People in First world countries usually think that they are more educated... Atheists I suppose?

Anyway, I'm just saying my point of view. I am also a very logical thinker. I do not believe in everything right away unless it is proven. But when it comes to faith... . that we cannot control everything and because of that there must be a higher being that is in control, That is one thing that science cannot prove... Until Every Atheist in the world can prove the science of what science cannot prove, let me know, and I will surely review my views on my faith.

Let me leave you people with a link to a more scholarly view on Believing the existence of God by St. Thomas Aquinas: http://www.saintaquinas.com/belief_in_God.html

My book is out:

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Atheism

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Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Rochester. Teaching at CSUS since 1996. My main area of research and publication now is atheism and philosophy of religion. I am also interested in philosophy of mind, epistemology, and rational decision theory/critical thinking.

Quotes:

"Science. It works, bitches."

"The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully." - Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

"Religion easily has the greatest bullshit story ever told. Think about it. Religion has actually convinced people that there's an invisible man living in the sky who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry for ever and ever until the end of time. But he loves you! He loves you and he needs money!"George Carlin 1937 - 2008

Many Paths, No God.

I don't go to church, I AM a church, for fuck's sake. I'm MINISTRY. --Al Jourgensen

Every sect, as far as reason will help them, make use of it gladly; and where it fails them, they cry out, “It is a matter of faith, and above reason.”- John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

If life evolved, then there isn't anything left for God to do.

The universe is not fine-tuned for humanity. Humanity is fine-tuned to the universe. Victor Stenger

Skeptical theists choose to ride the trolley car of skepticism concerning the goods that God would know so as to undercut the evidential argument from evil. But once on that trolley car it may not be easy to prevent that skepticism from also undercutting any reasons they may suppose they have for thinking that God will provide them and the worshipful faithful with life everlasting in his presence. William Rowe

Unless you're one of those Easter-bunny vitalists who believes that personality results from some unquantifiable divine spark, there's really no alternative to the mechanistic view of human nature. Peter Watts

The essence of humanity's spiritual dilemma is that we evolved genetically to accept one truth and discovered another. E.O. Wilson

Creating humans who could understand the contrast between good and evil without subjecting them to eons of horrible suffering would be an utterly inconsequential matter for an omnipotent being. MM

The second commandment is "Thou shall not construct any graven images." Is this really the pinnacle of what we can achieve morally? The second most important moral principle for all the generations of humanity? It would be so easy to improve upon the 10 Commandments. How about "Try not to deep fry all of your food"? Sam Harris

Religion comes from the period of human prehistory where nobody--not even the mighty Democritus who concluded that all matter was made from atoms--had the smallest idea what was going on. It comes from the bawling and fearful infancy of our species, and is a babyish attempt to meet our inescapable demand for knowledge (as well as comfort, reassurance, and other infantile needs). Today the least educated of my children knows much more about the natural order than any of the founders of religion, and one would think--though the connection is not a fully demonstrable one--that this is why they seem so uninterested in sending fellow humans to hell.Christopher Hitchens, God is Not Great

We believe with certainty that an ethical life can be lived without religion. And we know for a fact that the corollary holds true--that religion has caused innumerable people not just to conduct themselves no better than others, but to award themselves permission to behave in ways that would make a brothel-keeper or an ethnic cleanser raise an eyebrow. Christopher Hitchens, God Is Not Great

If atheism is a religion, then not playing chess is a hobby.

"Imagine a world in which generations of human beings come to believe that certain films were made by God or that specific software was coded by him. Imagine a future in which millions of our descendants murder each other over rival interpretations of Star Wars or Windows 98. Could anything--anything--be more ridiculous? And yet, this would be no more ridiculous than the world we are living in." Sam Harris, The End of Faith, 36.

"Only a tiny fraction of corpsesfossilize, and we are lucky to have as many intermediate fossils as we do. We could easily have had no fossils at all, and still the evidence for evolution from other sources, such as molecular genetics and geographical distribution, would be overwhelmingly strong. On the other hand, evolution makes the strong prediction that if a single fossil turned up in the wrong geological stratum, the theory would be blown out of the water." Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, p. 127.

One cannot take, "believing in X gives me hope, makes me moral, or gives me comfort," to be a reason for believing X. It might make me moral if I believe that I will be shot the moment I do something immoral, but that doesn't make it possible for me to believe it, or to take its effects on me as reasons for thinking it is true. Matt McCormick

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Top Ten Myths about Belief in God

1. Myth: Without God, life has no meaning.

There are 1.2 billion Chinese who have no predominant religion, and 1 billion people in India who are predominantly Hindu. And 65% of Japan's 127 million people claim to be non-believers. It is laughable to suggest that none of these billions of people are leading meaningful lives.

2. Myth: Prayer works.

Numerous studies have now shown that remote, blind, inter-cessionary prayer has no effect whatsoever of the health or well-being of subject's health, psychological states, or longevity. Furthermore, we have no evidence to support the view that people who wish fervently in their heads for things that they want get those things at any higher rate than people who do not.

3. Myth: Atheists are less decent, less moral, and overall worse people than believers.

There are hundreds of millions of non-believers on the planet living normal, decent, moral lives. They love their children, care about others, obey laws, and try to keep from doing harm to others just like everyone else. In fact, in predominately non-believing countries such as in northern Europe, measures of societal health such as life expectancy at birth, adult literacy, per capita income, education, homicide, suicide, gender equality, and political coercion are better than they are in believing societies.

4. Myth: Belief in God is compatible with the descriptions, explanations and products of science.

In the past, every supernatural or paranormal explanation of phenomena that humans believed turned out to be mistaken; science has always found a physical explanation that revealed that the supernatural view was a myth. Modern organisms evolved from lower life forms, they weren't created 6,000 years ago in the finished state. Fever is not caused by demon possession. Bad weather is not the wrath of angry gods. Miracle claims have turned out to be mistakes, frauds, or deceptions. So we have every reason to conclude that science will continue to undermine the superstitious worldview of religion.

5. Myth: We have immortal souls that survive the death of the body.

We have mountains of evidence that makes it clear that our consciousness, our beliefs, our desires, our thoughts all depend upon the proper functioning of our brains our nervous systems to exist. So when the brain dies, all of these things that we identify with the soul also cease to exist. Despite the fact that billions of people have lived and died on this planet, we do not have a single credible case of someone's soul, or consciousness, or personality continuing to exist despite the demise of their bodies. Allegations of spirit chandlers, psychics, ghost stories, and communications with the dead have all turned out to be frauds, deceptions, mistakes, and lies.

6. Myth: If there is no God, everything is permitted. Only belief in God makes people moral.

Consider the billions of people in China, India, and Japan above. If this claim was true, none of them would be decent moral people. So Ghandi, the Buddha, and Confucius, to name only a few were not moral people on this view, not to mention these other famous atheists: Abraham Lincoln, Albert Einstein, Aldous Huxley, Charles Darwin, Benjamin Franklin, Carl Sagan, Bertrand Russell, Elizabeth Cady-Stanton, John Stuart Mill, Galileo, George Bernard Shaw, Gloria Steinam, James Madison, John Adams, and so on.

7. Myth: Believing in God is never a root cause of significant evil.

The counter examples of cases where it was someone's belief in God that was the direct justification for their perpetrated horrendous evils on humankind are too numerous to mention.

8. Myth: The existence of God would explain the origins of the universe and humanity.

All of the questions that allegedly plague non-God attempts to explain our origins--why are we here, where are we going, what is the point of it all, why is the universe here--still apply to the faux explanation of God. The suggestion that God created everything does not make it any clearer to us where it all came from, how he created it, why he created it, where it isall going. In fact, it raises even more difficult mysteries: how did God, operating outside the confines of space, time, and natural law "create" or "build" a universe that has physical laws? We have no precedent and maybe no hope of answering or understanding such a possibility. What does it mean to say that some disembodied, spiritual being who knows everything and has all power, "loves" us, or has thoughts, or goals, or plans? How could such a being have any sort of personal relationship with beings like us?

9. Myth: Even if it isn't true, there's no harm in my believing in God anyway.

People's religious views inform their voting, how they raise their children, what they think is moral and immoral, what laws and legislation they pass, who they are friends and enemies with, what companies they invest in, where they donate to charities, who they approve and disapprove of, who they are willing to kill or tolerate, what crimes they are willing to commit, and which wars they are willing to fight. How could any reasonable person think that religious beliefs are insignificant.

10: Myth: There is a God.

Common Criticisms of Atheism (and Why They’re Mistaken)

1. You can’t prove atheism.You can never prove a negative, so atheism requires as much faith as religion.

Atheists are frequently accosted with this accusation, suggesting that in order for non-belief to be reasonable, it must be founded on deductively certain grounds. Many atheists within the deductive atheology tradition have presented just those sorts of arguments, but those arguments are often ignored. But more importantly, the critic has invoked a standard of justification that almost none of our beliefs meet. If we demand that beliefs are not justified unless we have deductive proof, then all of us will have to throw out the vast majority of things we currently believe—oxygen exists, the Earth orbits the Sun, viruses cause disease, the 2008 summer Olympics were in China, and so on. The believer has invoked one set of abnormally stringent standards for the atheist while helping himself to countless beliefs of his own that cannot satisfy those standards. Deductive certainty is not required to draw a reasonable conclusion that a claim is true.

As for requiring faith, is the objection that no matter what, all positions require faith?Would that imply that one is free to just adopt any view they like?Religiousness and non-belief are on the same footing?(they aren’t).If so, then the believer can hardly criticize the non-believer for not believing. Is the objection that one should never believe anything on the basis of faith?Faith is a bad thing?That would be a surprising position for the believer to take, and, ironically, the atheist is in complete agreement.

2. The evidence shows that we should believe.

If in fact there is sufficient evidence to indicate that God exists, then a reasonable person should believe it. Surprisingly, very few people pursue this line as a criticism of atheism. But recently, modern versions of the design and cosmological arguments have been presented by believers that require serious consideration. Many atheists cite a range of reasons why they do not believe that these arguments are successful. If an atheist has reflected carefully on the best evidence presented for God’s existence and finds that evidence insufficient, then it’s implausible to fault them for irrationality, epistemic irresponsibility, or for being obviously mistaken.Given that atheists are so widely criticized, and that religious belief is so common and encouraged uncritically, the chances are good that any given atheist has reflected more carefully about the evidence.

3. You should have faith.

Appeals to faith also should not be construed as having prescriptive force the way appeals to evidence or arguments do. The general view is that when a person grasps that an argument is sound, that imposes an epistemic obligation of sorts on her to accept the conclusion. One person’s faith that God exists does not have this sort of inter-subjective implication. Failing to believe what is clearly supported by the evidence is ordinarily irrational. Failure to have faith that some claim is true is not similarly culpable. At the very least, having faith, where that means believing despite a lack of evidence or despite contrary evidence is highly suspect. Having faith is the questionable practice, not failing to have it.

4. Atheism is bleak, nihilistic, amoral, dehumanizing, or depressing.

These accusations have been dealt with countless times. But let’s suppose that they are correct. Would they be reasons to reject the truth of atheism? They might be unpleasant affects, but having negative emotions about a claim doesn’t provide us with any evidence that it is false. Imagine upon hearing news about the Americans dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki someone steadfastly refused to believe it because it was bleak, nihilistic, amoral, dehumanizing, or depressing. Suppose we refused to believe that there is an AIDS epidemic that is killing hundreds of thousands of people in Africa on the same grounds.

5.Atheism is bad for you.Some studies in recent years have suggested that people who regularly attend church, pray, and participate in religious activities are happier, live longer, have better health, and less depression.

First, these results and the methodologies that produced them have been thoroughly criticized by experts in the field.Second, it would be foolish to conclude that even if these claims about quality of life were true, that somehow shows that there is theism is correct and atheism is mistaken.What would follow, perhaps, is that participating in social events like those in religious practices are good for you, nothing more.There are a number of obvious natural explanations.Third, it is difficult to know the direction of the causal arrow in these cases.Does being religious result in these positive effects, or are people who are happier, healthier, and not depressed more inclined to participate in religions for some other reasons?Fourth, in a number of studies atheistic societies like those in northern Europe scored higher on a wide range of society health measures than religious societies.

Given that atheists make up a tiny proportion of the world’s population, and that religious governments and ideals have held sway globally for thousands of years, believers will certainly lose in a contest over “who has done more harm,” or “which ideology has caused more human suffering.”It has not been atheism because atheists have been widely persecuted, tortured, and killed for centuries nearly to the point of extinction.

Sam Harris has argued that the problem with these regimes has been that they became too much like religions.“Such regimes are dogmatic to the core and generally give rise to personality cults that are indistinguishable from cults of religious hero worship. Auschwitz, the gulag, and the killing fields were not examples of what happens when human beings reject religious dogma; they are examples of political, racial and nationalistic dogma run amok. There is no society in human history that ever suffered because its people became too reasonable.”

7.Atheists are harsh, intolerant, and hateful of religion.

Sam Harris has advocated something he calls “conversational intolerance.”For too long, a confusion about religious tolerance has led people to look the other way and say nothing while people with dangerous religious agendas have undermined science, the public good, and the progress of the human race.There is no doubt that people are entitled to read what they choose, write and speak freely, and pursue the religions of their choice.But that entitlement does not guarantee that the rest of us must remain silent or not verbally criticize or object to their ideas and their practices, especially when they affect all of us.Religious beliefs have a direct affect on who a person votes for, what wars they fight, who they elect to the school board, what laws they pass, who they drop bombs on, what research they fund (and don’t), which social programs they fund (and don’t), and a long list of other vital, public matters.Atheists are under no obligation to remain silent about those beliefs and practices that urgently need to be brought into the light and reasonably evaluated.

Real respect for humanity will not be found by indulging your neighbor’s foolishness, or overlooking dangerous mistakes.Real respect is found in disagreement.The most important thing we can do for each other is disagree vigorously and thoughtfully so that we can all get closer to the truth.

8.Science is as much a religious ideology as religion is.

At their cores, religions and science have a profound difference.The essence of religion is sustaining belief in the face of doubts, obeying authority, and conforming to a fixed set of doctrines.By contrast, the most important discovery that humans have ever made is the scientific method.The essence of that method is diametrically opposed to religious ideals:actively seek out disconfirming evidence.The cardinal virtues of the scientific approach are to doubt, analyze, critique, be skeptical, and always be prepared to draw a different conclusion if the evidence demands it.